LESSON PLAN REVIEWING RELECTION
As a second-time undergraduate teaching assistant and a part of ENGL388V section 0201, one of the tasks for this semester was to review some of the first-time UTA work. This experience provided the opportunity to see what other English classes focus on as well as provided inspiration and ideas to use in my own work in the future as a UTA. I had the opportunity to review four different lesson plans.
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The first lesson plan was for an ENGL101 class. This UTA created an activity to teach make sure her students understood the three different types of casual arguments. One part her lesson plan that I thought was effective was that she incorporated a hands-on group activity. This activity involved giving students index cards with different arguments and she had students get into groups to categorize them. I liked this idea because I felt as though it was a good way to introduce the ideas she wanted the students to understand before moving onto more in-depth work with the topic.
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The second lesson plan was called "Finding Relevant Cases for a Legal Memo." This lesson plan required students to use LexisNexis, which is a database to search for different cases. This UTA planned some time within her lesson plan to show students how to use this site to find the best results. The fact that she incorporated this into her lesson plan shows she has already thought of areas students may need some guidance on to result in the best work possible.
The third lesson plan was about writing a referral email and thank you note. The activity involved writing a hypothetical thank you note to practice the skills they went over in the lesson. I thought this topic was a good idea for a lesson plan because this is something that everyone in the class can potentially use in the future, regardless if their career path is related to English/writing specifically.
The fourth lesson plan that I reviewed was called "Aristotle's Five Cannons of Rhetoric." This lesson plan was composed of instructional power point materials, a discussion board post, a quiz, and a survey. I think that this post did a good job of starting off small with the introductory information and then ending with the quiz after the students had a chance to familiarize themselves with the concepts.
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As a third time UTA, I completed two more peer reviews. The first one was for a major assignment known as the "Excerpt Portfolio" for one of the first time UTAs classes. The goal of this assignments was to give students practice and tips for how to make a good portfolio. His lesson plan involved a powerpoint, discussion, and showing examples. One suggestion that I had for him was to include actual examples of student work so they can see exactly what they are expected to do and exactly what would not work.
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The other less plan that I looked at this semester was for someone who wanted to help their students with nonverbal communication skills. They planned to show a video and have a discussion about what to and what no to do. My suggestions for them was to hand out a little tips sheet so that students could remember the most important points from the lesson.
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Overall, I thought these lesson plans would be successful and useful activities to introduce into a classroom. Each one had a well thought out plan consisting of introductory materials and a task for the students. My main piece of advice to some of them was to consider the structure in terms of timing. One topic that we discussed in the ENGL388V seminar last semester was time management and how sometimes lessons plans can be over and underestimated in terms of time length.